even the mistakes sound like jazz

It's Shakespeare Day! My tradition is to post both a poem that has something to do with Shakespeare, and a sonnet by Shakespeare. This year, it's Rita Dove and Sonnet 55.

He drums the piano wood,
crowing.

Champion Jack in love
and in debt,
in a tan walking suit
with a flag on the pocket,
with a red eye
for women, with a
diamond-studded
ear, with sand
in a mouthful of mush—

poor me
poor me
I keep on drifting 
like a ship out 
on the sea

That afternoon two students
from the Akademie
showed him the town.
Munich was misbehaving,
whipping
his ass to ice
while his shoes
soaked through. His guides
pointed at a clock
in a blue-tiled house.
And tonight

every song he sings
is written by Shakespeare
and his mother-in-law.
I love you, baby,
but it don’t mean
a goddam thing.
In trouble
with every woman he’s
ever known, all of them
ugly—skinny legs, lie gap
waiting behind the lips
to suck him in.

Going down slow
crooning Shakespeare say
man must be
careful what he kiss
when he drunk,
going down
for the third set
past the stragglers
at the bar,
the bourbon in his hand
some bitch’s cold
wet heart,
the whole joint

stinking on beer;
in love and winning
now, so even the mistakes
sound like jazz,
poor me, moaning
so no one hears:

my home’s in Louisiana,
my voice is wrong
I’m broke and can’t hold 
my piss;
my mother told me
there’d be days like this.

—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Shakespeare Say" from Museum, 1983.

*

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 55.